Cities across the U.S. are abandoning efforts to regulate panhandling, as more federal courts declare local restrictions on where and when people can beg to be violations of First Amendment rights.

In recent years, federal judges have ruled panhandling ordinances unconstitutional in cities in Colorado, Florida, Illinois and Massachusetts, according to court records. Challenges to panhandling restrictions are pending in Washington, D.C., Houston, Oklahoma City and Pensacola, Fla.

The rulings have frustrated efforts by city officials, who describe panhandling as a nuisance, a drag on tourism and a safety risk for both panhandlers and the people they solicit for donations.

“It is a serious public health issue when pedestrians get struck, or cars are having to get out of the way,” said
Marc Eichenbaum,
a special assistant to Houston Mayor
Sylvester Turner.
The city’s ordinance, the subject of a legal challenge filed in May, a month after it was enacted, prohibits solicitation in roadways and near ATMs, gas stations and outdoor cafes.

A 2016 study of 187 cities by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, an advocacy group, found that 27% broadly banned solicitation, while 61% prohibited panhandling in certain public spaces. Citywide bans on panhandling increased by 43% since the center began tracking ordinances in the sample group of cities in 2006.

Homeless in America: Estimated number of U.S. homeless people
Source: Department of Housing and Urban Development

Many cities turned to the policies, often pushed by commercial-property owners, as they struggled to address rising homelessness. But lawyers who represent panhandlers say such policies can make the problem worse by saddling poor people—research shows that a large percentage of panhandlers are homeless—with fines and arrest records that make it harder for them to climb out of poverty.

“What cities need to do is focus on the conduct that is actually problematic,” said
Joseph Mead,
a law professor at Cleveland State University who worked with the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio to challenge panhandling ordinances in the state, referring to crimes such as assault.

Courts apply varying levels of scrutiny to their review of laws that limit speech.

The Supreme Court broadened the category of laws that require the highest level of scrutiny in its 2015 ruling in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, a case involving an ordinance in the Arizona municipality that dictated when and for how long churches and nonprofit groups could post signs announcing upcoming services or events.

The majority ruled that the sign ordinance amounted to the most serious kind of curb on speech, a “content-based” regulation, and struck it down as a violation of the First Amendment.

Before the ruling, many courts had defined content-based regulations more narrowly as those that stifle speech because of the idea it conveys or because the government disapproves of its message.

But Justice
Clarence Thomas
wrote in the June 2015 ruling that speech restrictions based on the topic discussed or subject matter also demand the highest level of scrutiny.

Regulations that limit speech without regard to content or speaker—known as “content-neutral” restrictions—have an easier legal test to pass. Some courts placed panhandling laws in the content-neutral category because the restrictions weren’t meant to silence a message with which the local governments disagreed.

Since Justice Thomas’s ruling, the lower courts have relabeled panhandling restrictions as content-based speech and put them to the harshest legal test, one that few laws pass.

In the months following the decision, federal courts blocked ordinances in Springfield, Ill., and Lowell, Mass., that banned panhandling in their historic downtown districts; dashed a Grand Junction, Colo., ordinance that prohibited begging after dark or near restaurant patios and ATMs; and struck down two Worcester, Mass., ordinances that barred panhandlers from roadways, traffic islands, mass transit stops and other places.

‘There’s a negative stereotype when it comes to people asking for help.’

—Jerry Hill

In defense of the ordinances, city officials testified about their desire to create zones, particularly in tourist areas, where pedestrians could be free from unwanted solicitation, and pointed to potential safety hazards.

While the challenge to Worcester’s 2013 solicitation ordinances was pending, a panhandler,
Michael Gorham,
was hit by a car in the middle of the street at night, according to court documents. He later died from his injuries.

U.S. District Judge
Timothy Hillman
found that the city had “a legitimate interest in promoting the safety and convenience of its citizens,” but that the ban was too broad. “Post Reed, municipalities must go back to the drafting board,” Judge Hillman wrote.

Officials in Akron, Ohio, and Cleveland repealed their panhandling restrictions after the ACLU of Ohio and others challenged them in court in 2016 and earlier this year. Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown followed suit, without litigation, said Mr. Mead.

Jerry Hill,
one of the Akron panhandlers who sued the city, said police regularly had shooed him away, cutting him off from his sole source of income. Mr. Hill has been unemployed since 2001 and intermittently homeless since then, he said.

“There’s a negative stereotype when it comes to people asking for help,” said Mr. Hill, who is seeking Social Security income for a nerve disorder that causes him to tremble. “What’s wrong with the word ‘help’?”

A spokeswoman for Akron Mayor
Daniel Horrigan
declined to comment.

In Colorado, after a federal judge struck down Grand Junction’s law in September 2015, Denver, Aurora, Boulder and Colorado Springs rescinded their panhandling restrictions. About three dozen other cities agreed to repeal old laws that prohibited loitering for the purpose of begging, said
Mark Silverstein,
legal director for the ACLU of Colorado.

U.S. Judge
Christine Arguello
said in her ruling that Grand Junction had failed to show that “a repeated request for money or other thing of value necessarily threatens public safety.”

Grand Junction officials are considering other ways to reduce panhandling, including design changes to popular gathering spots and adding more volunteers and public safety officers, said
Greg Caton,
city manager.